


legacy

by owlinaminor



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, Graduation, Growing Up, Shiratorizawa, character study ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 19:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9198665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: Today, the Shiratorizawa third-years will graduate.  Tsutomu has been dreading this day for months.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohirareon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohirareon/gifts).



> happy holidays megan!!! you requested that i write about ushijima hugging everyone... it got more emotional than intended. but then, often, when i think about you and our friendship, i get more emotional than intended, so this is only fitting. ❤❤❤
> 
> thank you [becky](https://twitter.com/dickaeopolis) for betaing! and i listened to [and the grass sings in the meadows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Uv0oR_B1c) approximately two hundred times while writing this; i suggest you listen to it while reading.

 

Tsutomu has been dreading this day for months.

Well, to be fair, he’s also been looking forward to this day for months.  It’s the final day of his first year at Shiratorizawa, the day that the third-years will graduate and he will become the volleyball team’s ace.  He’s been dreaming of this since his first tournament – since he heard an entire stadium thundering with Ushijima’s name and realized that, one day, those cheers would be for him.

He’s been playing as the team’s main wing spiker in practice for the past couple of months already, his perfect straights and powerful crosses getting stronger every day, but there’s something entirely different about being one of the first names on the roster, about being the one marveled at during tournaments.  Tsutomu dreams of hitting spikes so fast, they bounce off the court and straight into the ceiling.  He dreams of first-years from other schools pointing at him in the hallway and whispering rumors they’ve heard about how unbeatable he is.  He dreams of classmates asking him over lunch how he hit this spike or won that point.  He sees himself in Ushijima’s shoes so clearly, it’s as though he was born to wear them.

Yet as the weeks passed after Shiratorizawa’s spring high loss and Tsutomu began to take on the mantle of ace, he realized that practice without the third-years was… kind-of terrible.  Shirabu is shaping up to be a good captain, more vocal than Ushijima but just as steady, and the new second- and first-year starters are powerful cannons in their own right (of course they are, they go to _Shiratorizawa)._ Yet something feels missing without Tendou’s loud shouts or Semi’s and Yamagata’s bickering.  The gym is emptier.  Quieter.  Tsutomu feels as though he has to shout even louder to fill the silence.

Tsutomu still sees the third-years, sometimes - at least one or two of them will come to practice on weekends, to lead one drill or another.  And he keeps passing them in the hallway, almost meeting them at lunch, bumping into Semi when they go to the bathroom.  But it’s strange, seeing them in school uniforms rather than practice clothes, as though they’re already moving on to a life that doesn’t involve Shiratorizawa - doesn’t involve Tsutomu.

And now, after today, they’re going to be gone forever.

Ushijima said, in his final speech to the team after their loss to Karasuno, that Kawanishi would have to become the cornerstone of Shiratorizawa’s blocking strength after Tendou passed on.  And Tendou shot back that it wasn’t as though he was dying, but… in a way, he is.  The third-years will never walk the halls of Shiratorizawa in the same uniforms, after today.  They will never gather as a team in this gym again.  They will never be Tsutomu’s senpais in quite the same way again.  They will never –

“Hey, Goshiki!  Break ended two minutes ago!”

Tsutomu shakes away the bad thoughts and charges across the gym, where Shirabu is waiting with crossed arms and a scowl.

“Sorry, captain!” he exclaims.

“Don’t apologize to _me,”_ Shirabu replies.  He jerks his head in the direction of the net, where several other first-years are lined up.  “Just get moving.  Receive practice, now.”

Tsutomu takes his place in line, backs up when the ball comes towards him, bends his knees and brings his arms up – as though this was any other day of practice.  But his mind keeps wandering, picturing how Oohira would have better form, Ushijima would be steadier, Yamagata would be more accurate.  By the end of practice, he’s missed five spikes, flubbed four receives, and sent one toss straight into the gym ceiling.

He’s only thankful that none of his old senpai are at morning practice to watch him fail.

* * *

“Goshiki.”

Tsutomu glances up, surprised – he wasn’t expecting anyone else to stick around after clean-up.  He’s probably going to be late to class at this point, but he didn’t want to leave the gym until his mind was done racing quite this fast, churning in circles around _senpai leaving_ and _practice too quiet_ and _not good enough_.

He glances up, surprised – and Shirabu is there, sliding down to sit next to him against the back wall of the gym.  He’s already changed into his uniform, but he’s still wearing his practice sneakers – as though wearing loafers in here would be a crime against volleyball.

“H-hi,” Tsutomu stammers.  “What’re you doing here?”

“Something’s up, with you,” Shirabu says, not looking at Tsutomu.  He’s gazing up at the rafters of the gym, where golden morning light pours in through cracks in the wood.  “Something’s up, and you’re gonna tell me what it is.”

“How do you know?” Tsutomu demands.

Shirabu glances at Tsutomu, just for a second – but the exasperated ire in his eyes tells Tsutomu not to question his captain.

“I guess I’m just… nervous,” he admits.  “About the senpai graduating.  And what the team will be like without them.”

“What the team will be like without them?” Shirabu echoes.  “But we’ve been practicing without them for weeks already.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t feel like that,” Tsutomu protests.  “It feels like they’re still here, still watching us – I keep expecting Tendou to yell when I make a spike, or Oohira to tell me where my form is bad, or Semi to tell me I’m being too loud, or Ushijima to always be _so much better than me_.  And when they graduate, they’re going to stop coming to practice, even on weekends!  And I just don’t know… I don’t know if I’ll know what to do without them.”

“You’re haunted by them,” Shirabu says quietly.  He stares down at his hands, breathes in slowly, and Tsutomu waits for him to continue.  “I… I felt the same way, last year, when I went from being the only first-year regular to being the center of the team’s strategy.  There weren’t as many third-years on the team, and none of them were as good as Ushijima, but… yeah.  I couldn’t rely on my senpai to tell me when and how to set any more.  And I had that same weird feeling you have now, of not knowing how to live up to them once they weren’t there to watch.”

“And how did you move past it?” Tsutomu asks.  “How did you keep going?”

Shirabu turns and stares directly at Tsutomu, hazel eyes sharp and piercing as they are when he sizes up opposing setters during matches.

“I stopped imagining them,” he says.  “I realized that pretending they were there, pretending I still had to impress them or act like them, was only holding me back.  I was never going to be a good setter for my new team if I kept focusing on my old team.”

“But doesn’t that mean… changing what the team is?”

Shirabu shrugs.  “Teams change.  Like seasons, and landscapes, and all that shit.  Shiratorizawa won’t be the same without the third-years, but maybe the third-years were holding us back in ways that we won’t know until we start playing on our own.”

He stands up, reaches his hand out to Tsutomu – and for a moment, Tsutomu is caught by Shirabu’s silhouette in the empty gym, somehow taller than his usual stance, as though the sunlight has pulled him up onto an invisible throne.  He’s going to be a good captain, Tsutomu thinks.  More vocal than Ushijima, but just as steady – but maybe a different kind of steady, a focused beam of anger where where Ushijima was a wide, unmovable tree.

“If you keep trying to copy Ushijima,” Shirabu says, “you’ll never surpass him.  Now come on, we’re both gonna be late to class.”

* * *

That afternoon, Washijou splits the second- and first-years into groups of three, and has them play one-set matches against each other.

At first, Tsutomu can’t help picturing the three-on-threes the third-years used to play – the formidable duo of Semi’s precise sets and Tendou’s wild spikes, the bets Yamagata would place on his own team, the smiles that would curve across Ushijima’s face when his team inevitably won.  But then, he remembers what Shirabu said, that morning in the gym.

_If you keep trying to copy Ushijima, you’ll never surpass him._

And Tsutomu pushes the ghosts out of his mind, tells Tendou to go reread his manga collection and Yamagata to go eat another lunch and Ushijima to go water his plants.  He stops thinking about what his old senpai would think of this spike or that serve, and starts thinking about _this spike_ and _that serve_.  What angle he can hit the ball at to deflect off the block.  Where the ball could land and who’s going to hit it.  How fast he needs to run in order to jump at precisely the right time.

Tsutomu learned his skills from his senpai, but they’re skills he’s built on without them.  He thinks of the aces he saw at Nationals, using time-difference attacks and block-follows and other strategies Ushijima has always been too strong to bother with.  He thinks of the wing spikers at Seijoh, rationing their strength with practiced, deceptive ease so that they’ll peak at the end of the game.  He thinks of Hinata Shouyou, never taking no for an answer, never tiring, never staying on the ground for too long.

One of Tsutomu’s teammates sets the ball – it goes wide across the net, heading out of bounds.  The other team relaxes, thinking nobody will get it.  But Tsutomu looks and he _sees_ – sees the angle of the ball, the positions of the other players, the distance from him to the net –

Tsutomu sees.  He runs.  He spikes.

The ball slams down centimeters from the other side of the net, inside the boundaries but nowhere near the hands of the other team.  A point is awarded to Tsutomu’s side – they’ve won the set.

And the gym erupts in the sound of Tsutomu’s name.

Tsutomu turns around, feeling as though he’s been struck by lightning -  and in the bleachers, he sees five old third-years, smiling at him.

“That was an incredible spike!” Oohira shouts.

“Such a narrow angle – I don’t think even I could’ve gotten that,” Yamagata admits.

“You’ve really become a pain in the ass, kid,” Semi says.

“Go-shi-ki!  Go-shi-ki!  Go-shi-ki!” Tendou chants, pumping his fist in the air as though he himself won the point.

Tsutomu’s eyes shift, almost of their own accord, to focus on Ushijima.  The former captain meets his gaze steadily, then nods.

Tsutomu nearly jumps a meter in the air.

* * *

Tsutomu goes to the graduation ceremony.

Most first-years don’t – they don’t see any point in sitting on hardbacked chairs in the hot sun for two hours when nobody they know is graduating.  But Tsutomu wouldn’t miss it for the world.

He gets a spot up in the front, next to Shirabu and Kawanishi.  Both of them went to the ceremony last year, and they warn Tsutomu about the horrors to come: long speeches, cliché platitudes, incessant repetitions of the same traditional melody as the graduating class ascends to the platform.  Tsutomu thinks it’s all very grand, though – it feels like he’s watching something out of a movie, when all the third-years march in, then everyone stands to sing the national anthem, then all the names are called out one by one.

When each name is called, the student answers with a _hai._  Tsutomu has never heard so many different _hai_ s in his life – loud ones, quiet ones, enthusiastic ones, apathetic ones.  Some people don’t even answer at all.  But there are five voices he can pick out above all the rest: Oohira, low and warm; Semi, biting and proud; Yamagata, quiet and sure; Tendou, loud and ringing; Ushijima, deep and steady.  One third-year – the class president, Shirabu tells Tsutomu in a whisper – approaches the podium to receive a diploma on behalf of the rest of her class, then there are a bunch of long speeches from the principal and other administrators, most of whom Tsutomu doesn’t recognize.  He seeks out his senpai in the crowd, and briefly catches Tendou’s eye – Tendou winks at him, and Tsutomu has to stifle a giggle.

After the speeches, which seem to go on forever, all the third-years stand again and sing a traditional song.  They’re supposed to stay in alphabetical order, but somehow, all of Tsutomu’s teammates find each other and stand with their arms on each other’s shoulders – Semi on one end, Tendou on the other, Ushijima in the middle.

Tsutomu watches everything – watches how their mouths open in song even though he _knows_ none of them can carry a tune, watches how they’re all grinning so brightly and so proud, watches how Ushijima’s eyes close just for a moment –

“Tsutomu, are you _crying?”_ Shirabu whispers.

“No!” says Tsutomu. “What! No!”

But the wetness in Tsutomu’s eyes is hard to wipe away.  His jacket sleeve is damp when the third-years – no, _graduates,_ now – descend from the stage and head out in a chaotic mess of ecstatic shouting.

The audience begins to leave quickly, too, as though they didn’t just watch something beautiful and life-changing and terribly sad in a way that Tsutomu isn’t sure he could ever describe with words.

“Come on, we’ve gotta go,” Shirabu says.

“Go?” Tsutomu asks.  He wasn’t aware that the ceremony goes anywhere but down the aisles and up onto the platform.

“To the convenience store,” Kawanishi explains.  “Ushijima’s buying us all snacks.  You didn’t know that?”

* * *

As it turns out, Oohira buys the snacks, because Ushijima forgot his wallet.

They go to the same convenience store they’ve visited as a team all year – have visited, Tsutomu imagines, for years before this – and walk through the same cramped hallways, peer at the same rows of cheap ramen and rice crackers and melon bread.  But something feels different, now, as though the store has been cast in a different light, gold with just a hint of orange, like the afternoon sunlight starting to fade outside.

Oohira buys the snacks – pork buns, and mochi, and pretzel sticks, and pocky, and sponge cakes, and anything else one of the senpai shouts out.  The clerk shouts that they’re going to buy out his entire stock, but Yamagata shouts back that they just graduated, and he lets it slide.  He even gives them a discount.

The team – not quite a team any more – takes their new treasure trove and carries it back to the gym, where they set up a makeshift buffet in the yellow-green crabgrass outside.  The schoolyard is mostly empty now, except for a couple of janitors cleaning up from graduation and a few other small groups of graduated students, running around and getting each other to sign yearbooks.  All the former third-years sit back against the outer wall of the gym – except for Tendou, who flops onto his back in the grass and starts singing some nonsensical song about the passing clouds.

The conversation flows easily, from old training camp stories to making fun of Ushijima for a time he got lost in the middle of the Tokyo stadium to discussion of whether Washijou will ever retire (there’s a bet going on whether or not he’ll die mid-lecture, Tsutomu learns).  Tsutomu watches, chews slowly through a package of mochi, and wonders just why he’s here – why he’s been invited to what seems like a ritual for the graduating third-years, why he’s hearing all of these stories that seem to belong only to them.

But then, he looks over to Shirabu and Kawanishi, and sees that they may be sitting off to the side, but they’re participating just as avidly.  Shirabu’s up in arms about the heart attack he’s sure Washijou has coming, and Kawanishi’s seized an entire box of pretzels for himself.  Tsutomu grins and interjects himself into the dialogue – he’s always thought Washijou was already a ghost, or a vampire.  Something supernatural.

His senpai laugh at him – or they laugh with him – and the afternoon stretches, the sun lingering at the edge of the treetops as though it’s not ready to sink below the horizon just yet.

Tsutomu watches the five most recent veterans of Shiratorizawa’s boys volleyball team, arguing about some weird horror movie that Tendou made them all watch when they were first-years, and thinks that he might never be able to stop picturing them in the Shiratorizawa gym, but he can picture them in other places, too.  He can picture Ushijima on the national team, a powerhouse among powerhouses, hitting spikes loud enough to bring stadiums of people to their knees.  He can picture Tendou as an editor at some manga company, barreling through rows of cubicles to loudly inform the entire office that some author got an anime deal.  He can picture Oohira as a schoolteacher, patiently encouraging tiny children to keep trying when they get frustrated.  He can picture Semi as a fashion executive, informing their staff that they need a perfectly whipped caramel latte before they look at any new designs.  He can picture Yamagata as the manager of a small but successful izakaya, dragging drunk customers out on their ears before they can cause any trouble.

And he can picture all of them gathering here, in this schoolyard, by this gym, in five years from now – reminiscing about the team they’re still part of, the team that brought them all together.  And when he pictures them here, older and grayer but smiling just as brightly, he pictures himself here, too.  Slapping them on the back.  Teasing them for their gray hairs.  Telling them he took care of the team, after they left – telling them he made the team stronger.

“Friends,” Ushijima says, suddenly.  He stands, and motions the others to stand with him.  They do, albeit looking somewhat bemused – Yamagata has to put his back into pulling Tendou to his feet – but without question.  Ushijima may no longer be Shiratorizawa’s captain, but he will always be _their_ captain.

“Friends,” he says again.  “It has been an honor to stand on the court with you.”

“Aw, Wakatoshi, why so _formal,”_ Tendou teases.  “It’s not like we’re never gonna see each other again.”

“Yeah – we’re graduating, not dying,” Semi agrees.

But Ushijima quiets him – not with a look, but with a motion.  He steps forward, opens his arms, and envelops Semi in a tight hug.  To Tsutomu, it looks as though an old oak tree is spreading its branches to embrace the sky.

Semi gasps, but quickly melts into the embrace, their arms reaching around Ushijima’s broad back.  They stand still, for a moment – and Tsutomu thinks he sees Ushijima whisper something in Semi’s ear.  Something like _thank you._

And then, Tendou complains, _“Wakatoshi,_ c’mon, you really hugged Eita before me?”

“He’s all yours, you filthy animal,” Semi retorts, stepping back.  “I don’t think he’s showered since the spring tournament.”

Ushijima simply smiles, and reaches to hug Yamagata, then Oohira, before finally getting to Tendou.  Each hug is different in a way Tsutomu can’t quite describe – photographs tinted in different colors maybe, or melodies played on different instruments.  Yamagata and Ushijima pat each other aggressively on the back, then Oohira and Ushijima grip each other tightly, then Tendou and Ushijima embrace for such a long time that Semi and Shirabu start wolf-whistling at them.

And then, Ushijima moves towards his kouhai.  He hugs Kawanishi first, the middle blocker stiff in his arms like a wooden post with a vine growing around it, then turns to Shirabu, whose face goes bright red somewhere in the middle.  Tsutomu can’t help getting a little jealous – he’s been imagining what it might feel like to be enveloped in Ushijima’s arms since practically the day he joined the team, and now everyone else is getting to experience it first.

But when it’s his turn – when it’s finally his turn – all animosity he might’ve had melts away, easy as snow on the first day of spring.  Ushijima is warm and steady around him, not quite like an oak tree and not quite like the sunlight, but like the slow-burning fire in the heart of an engine, never growing cold, never giving up.

Tsutomu remembers what Ushijima had said, when he spoke to the team after the spring high – _Goshiki, I’m counting on you._

Ushijima doesn’t say it again now, but Tsutomu feels the words – feels Ushijima’s trust in the tightness of his arms, the warmth of his chest.  He feels Ushijima shake, ever so slightly, and he can feel his old captain’s regrets – his hope that his team will be even stronger without him.

“Goshiki,” Ushijima says.

He steps back, but continues to hold onto Tsutomu – one hand on each of Tsutomu’s shoulders, holding him steady.

“Yes!” Tsutomu replies.  He readies himself for advice, for warnings, for another reminder of the responsibility he holds as Shiratorizawa’s new ace –

“I’m proud of you.”

And it takes everything Tsutomu has not to burst into tears right then and there.  (Oohira discreetly passes him a tissue, though.  For that, Tsutomu is grateful.)

Ushijima lets go of Tsutomu’s shoulders, but Tsutomu feels the weight linger.  It’s a weight that no longer comes from Ushijima, but from Tsutomu himself – from the abilities he’s determined to develop and the victory he’s determined to bring his team.  It’s a weight he will carry with pride, and a weight he will pass on someday, when his time comes.  But it will never be quite the same weight as it is in this moment, and Tsutomu is… surprisingly okay with that thought.

For the past year, Ushijima and Shiratorizawa have been tied together in Tsutomu’s mind, linked by strings of _valor_ and _power_ and _force_.  But Ushijima is not Shiratorizawa, Tsutomu is now realizing.  He’s only one part of it, one incarnation – and if he was one incarnation, then Tsutomu is the next.  He will work hard to ensure that his incarnation is one worth remembering – he will, or he isn’t worth the title of Shiratorizawa’s ace.

“Get us to Nationals, next year,” Ushijima tells the new leaders of Shiratorizawa.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Shirabu answers, a grin spreading over his face like the blood-red sunset spilling across the sky.  “We will.”

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor) / [tumblr](http://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/)


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